Without Love
by ncfan
Summary: "It's useless, Kinzo." /One-sided Kinzo x Beatrice, spoilers for Ep. 2./


I own nothing.

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"You fool, Kinzo. Can't you see me, even though I am here?"

He's hunched over weeping, a shabby and pitiable state for such a man. The heady smell of early roses fills the air, and to herself, and perhaps to the furniture who stands glaring before her, daring to step forward to act as Kinzo's shield (but he is unimportant, and easily set aside), there is a faint smell of sweet smoke rising from her golden pipe.

Beatrice shakes her head and sighs heavily, bitterly. She lifts the mouthpiece of her pipe to her lips, taking a few unenthusiastic puffs and chewing listlessly upon it as she sometimes does, before letting her hand and the pipe in it curl around her chest instead, arms crossed.

He rants, he raves, tears dribbling down his lined and ancient face. Kinzo goes on about comets and the alliance of the planets and the phases of the moon, as though that will help, as though these things will make any difference. Beatrice can easily believe that perhaps Kinzo, in his madness, has convinced himself that all these petty, ineffectual things will make a difference, and give her back her form and the lion's share of her power. _But it will all come to nothing, you see, for you lack one vitally important element._

She looks upon him as he is now, and remembers Ushiromiya Kinzo as the young man he once was. Dogged, devoted, determined to learn to harness magic despite his utter lack of talent and vision. He read books, gathered artifacts, learned incantations and finally, finally, he invoked the name of Beatrice the Golden in a summoning ritual.

Amused by this blind human's sheer persistence, perhaps a little impressed, Beatrice had decided that she would answer the magician's call. She would have a hearty laugh at him, but determined that she would indeed grant him what he sought, and bestowed upon Kinzo a mountain of gold.

The moment Kinzo looked on her face, Beatrice was doomed.

_You chained me here, a prisoner of your mad desire. I threw away my body just to be rid of you, but you bound my soul to this island and forced it into a homunculus for your pleasure. When that vessel died, you once again made provisions to be sure that I, weak spirit, easily burned in the light of day, would never be able to leave this island._

_And yet, I pity you._

_I pity you the way God pities the world, milling about aimlessly like ants, missing the one thing they need most of all, that thing dancing forth before them, that they never are quite able to see._

_You will never see me. You will never notice me, though I stand so close to you that my hand can touch your body. You never even notice my touch upon your shoulder, so involved as you are in your grief._

_Without love, you will never see me. You claimed to love me, oh yes. What were the words you said, when you first chained me upon this island? "I do this out of love for you. I can not suffer losing you." Oh yes. Those are not the words of love, and if you think they are, then know that your "love" was a venomous, blighted thing. Your "love" was a chain around my neck. Your "love" was a pair of nails driven through my feet. Your "love" drove me to shed my body and become a houseless spirit._

_Look at you scream and wail and beg. Look at you tip your head to the gray skies and howl. You destroyed yourself, didn't you? I suppose that the emotions that have driven your actions towards me in the past could be taken for love by those who do not look so closely, and I suppose that your words now could be taken for words driven by anguished love. But I have the measure of you, Kinzo, better than anyone who would say that you love me. Your actions were driven by selfish obsession, and your words have the flavor of self-pity—_

"Just let me see your smile!" he wails.

—_and even now, you can do naught but make demands on me._

Beatrice is tired. A thousand-year-old witch has to be tired sometimes, and decades spent on this island with a mad, obsessed human magician as her unwitting prison warden is certainly tiresome. Exhausting, even, both for the body (though Beatrice has none at present), and the mind, and the heart.

(Because even she can trick herself into believing he loves her, from time to time, until she stands before him, and he sees nothing but his own misery.)

"…It's useless, Kinzo… Without love, it can not be seen."


End file.
